Many years back, I had, for a brief time, an ill-fated turbo'd 240sx. It attracted a lot of attention, as a very obviously tuned car. I constantly had people trying to get me to street race — not my thing, thank you. Most of them were from the usual suspects, like Civics, Mustangs, etc.

Back in those days though, I was working at McDonalds, and my absolute favorite ‘challenge' came from a co-worker, a kid there who everyone knew as a pathological liar.

He was the kind that would come up with the most impossible, ridiculous stories, and never admit he was making them up no matter how deep he dug himself. On finding out that the 240sx was mine, he attached himself to me and constantly tried to impress me with extensive knowledge of cars, all obviously gleaned from a viewing of Fast and the Furious while well distracted by pot and Doritos. Of course, he had to have a car as good as mine to impress me.

His problem was, of course, that he drove his mother's beater Ford Windstar to work. This, though, was only a minor inconvenience for his imagination, and thus was born the story of his FBI Special Ops Windstar. He had found this car at an auction and convinced his mother to buy it, he insisted, because he looked under the hood and saw that the FBI, which had previously owned the car, had forgotten to remove the Top-Secret Special Ops engine they had installed in it, as well as all the other FBI special equipment. The minivan was a real life James Bond car, he insisted, and could beat a Corvette on any racecourse. Even a Corvette with Nitrous! Plus, of course, he knew lots of secrets the government didn't, so he'd made it much faster after he bought it, primarily by, and here's the part that still makes me laugh to this day, "Taking out the old overdrive and replacing it with a supercharger!"

That was the point where I lost control and cracked up, but he maintained his story and insisted he was telling me the truth. He dragged me out to show me too, after warning me that the FBI obviously didn't want anyone to know that it was their Secret Ops Engine, so it looked just like a normal one, but he could still prove he replaced the overdrive with a supercharger! I should know what a supercharger sounds like, after all! He started the car up, and pointed out the ‘supercharger sound'...the very distinctive squeal of a badly worn out fan belt.

At that point I just nodded and let him have his story. To this day I wish I could have found somewhere to race him safely and accept his challenge, though, just to find out if he'd find an excuse to bow out, or go through with trying to race me in that thing and ruin his story.